A person must constantly exceed their level. If it kills you, it kills you.

“Bruce had me up to three miles a day, really at a good pace. We’d run the three miles in twenty-one or twenty-two minutes. Just under eight minutes a mile [Note: when running on his own in 1968, Lee would get his time down to six-and-a half minutes per mile]. So this morning he said to me “We’re going to go five.” I said, “Bruce, I can’t go five. I’m a helluva lot older than you are, and I can’t do five.” He said, “When we get to three, we’ll shift gears and it’s only two more and you’ll do it.” I said “Okay, hell, I’ll go for it.” So we get to three, we go into the fourth mile and I’m okay for three or four minutes, and then I really begin to give out. I’m tired, my heart’s pounding, I can’t go any more and so I say to him, “Bruce if I run any more,” –and we’re still running-”if I run any more I’m liable to have a heart attack and die.” He said, “Then die.” It made me so mad that I went the full five miles. Afterward I went to the shower and then I wanted to talk to him about it. I said, you know, “Why did you say that?” He said, “Because you might as well be dead. Seriously, if you always put limits on what you can do, physical or anything else, it’ll spread over into the rest of your life. It’ll spread into your work, into your morality, into your entire being. There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you. A man must constantly exceed his level.” – John Little

…a person must constantly exceed their level. this story never fails to motivate me and get me going.

“I have come to realize that I had everything that was important before I left”

“I was the ambitious one, the one that strayed far from home, chasing the dream, getting caught up in the consumerism. I’m glad that by the age of 38 I have come to realize that I had everything that was important before I left. The remainder was a constant cycle of churn, want more, want bigger, want better, want newer, want more convenient. Except it’s hard when it’s being fed to you every day by every billboard, every sign, every menu, every advert, every press release, every news story, every TV show to differentiate between want and need. When you stop to analyze what you actually need – I mean really need: clean air, clean water, shelter, nutrition, sanitation, family, community, companionship; how much of what you’re being sold every day is truly ‘needed’ and how much of it is a want to fulfill some notion that has been sold to you by the media?”

…from Hacker News.

The 10 principles you should follow, from the world’s oldest religion

upanishads-sitting-down-near

Ok, whether Hinduism is the world’s oldest surviving religion is debatable. But, like the question of whether Roger Federer is the tennis goat, it’s very much in the conversation.

The Upanishads lists 10 forbearances, essentially principles and activities that should be followed as sources of good karma and signs of virtue. They are:

  1. Ahimsa – don’t do harm to any living being, human or other
  2. Satya – always be truthful
  3. Asteya – don’t covet another’s property
  4. Brahmacharya – remain celibate while single, and stay faithful (broadly defined) in marriage
  5. Daya – be kind, without conditions
  6. Arjava – don’t deceive others
  7. Kshama – always forgive
  8. Dhriti – remain calm and modest in times of great wealth and poverty, whether of yourself or of others
  9. Mitahara – eat, drink, and accumulate (money and belongings) in moderation
  10. Saucha – clean the body and mind through both physical and spiritual actions

The suggestions pretty much boil down to this: think always of the Golden Rule, and apply it to others AND to yourself.

In just about every religion, you’ll see such lists, and you’ll see a LOT of similarities between them: Moses’s Ten Commandments. Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount and Sermon on the Plain. The Egyptian Book of the Dead. The Night Journey verses in the Qu’ran. And although I don’t remember such explicit directives in the Dao de Jing, you’ll find similar wisdom in Buddha’s Eightfold Path, in the Analects of Confucius…

Here are more interesting lists of knowledge and wisdom.

“I chose somethin’ else. And the reasons? There are no reasons.”

Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suit on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourselves. Choose your future. Choose life… But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin’ else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you’ve got heroin? – Trainspotting

I’m not saying you should choose heroin. But, to paraphrase the Chris Rock joke about OJ Simpson, I’m not saying I’d do it…but I understand.

To learn more about choice and why too much of it makes you unhappy (if you’re reading this, then you definitely have too much choice in your life :), here’s a great frank talk by Barry Schwartz, who coined “the paradox of choice”.

Weakness corrupts, and absolute weakness corrupts absolutely

It has been often said that power corrupts. But it is perhaps equally important to realize that weakness, too, corrupts. Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many. Hatred, malice, rudeness, intolerance, and suspicion are the fruits of weakness. The resentment of the weak does not spring from any injustice done to them but from the sense of their inadequacy and impotence. We cannot win the weak by sharing our wealth with them. They feel our generosity as oppression…Nor can we win the weak by sharing our hope, pride, or even hatred with them. We are too far ahead materially and too different in our historical experience to serve as an object of identification. Our healing gift to the weak is the capacity for self-help. We must learn how to impart to them the technical, social, and political skills which would enable them to get bread, human dignity, freedom, and strength by their own efforts.

Eric Hoffer (he of True Believer) in what he considered his best book, The Ordeal of Change.